


Our House

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 10 OT+ Fics [8]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Multi, OT5, Pitch is the new one here, Polyamory, Pre-OT6 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Jack’s a prodigy figure skater.North’s a CEO of a toy making company.Bunnymund’s a famed artist with a thing for faberge eggs.Toothania is a dentist and head of a prestigious children’s school.Sanderson is a renowned children’s author.What do they have in common and how do they meet? You decide?"The prompt said gen but I made it OT5 because I’ve kind of been toying around with this idea for a while.Pitch lives across the street from a Victorian mansion that’s been for sale for a very long time. Then, one day, someone moves in–or several someones? It’s hard to tell, and Pitch may actually have to interact with his neighbors for once to find out who he needs to tell not to mess the place up.
Relationships: E. Aster Bunnymund/Jack Frost/Nicholas St. North/Sanderson Mansnoozie/Toothiana
Series: My Top 10 OT+ Fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644124
Kudos: 24
Collections: RotG Polyamory Fics





	Our House

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 8/26/2015.

Pitch usually didn’t pay a lot of attention to his neighbors. He assumed that if they thought of him at all, they thought he was odd, and this didn’t bother him. By their standards they were most certainly right. Managing his sleeping hours in the summer so that he was always sleeping during the day’s hottest hours was the least of it. The fact that he made much of his money self-publishing very strange horror erotica was the most of it, along with the fact that he had, under a pseudonym, had five gore-dripping doorstoppers published traditionally. An extraordinarily bad encounter with a fan who he truly felt had misinterpreted what he had been trying to say in his novels had left him with a long scar on his neck and a necessary retreat into obscurity. So, he lived in a small suburban bungalow, which had the primary charm of placing him among people who did not consider attacking someone with a knife in their list of possible actions.  
  
None of them seemed interesting to him, naturally, but his own life was interesting to him, and that made up for it.  
  
That, and the house across the street. Pitch’s bungalow was at the corner of a T-intersection, and the street that ended at that intersection served as an approach to the elaborate iron gate of the massive Victorian mansion behind it. Oh, that house! No one lived in it now, though whoever owned it must have known what they had, because it remained sound and solid and the For Sale sign was replaced regularly. It needed a fresh coat of paint—Pitch had spent much time happily selecting all the accent colors a place like that deserved—and the grounds were going a little wild, but other than that, it was perfect! Perfect! Three stories tall, two towers, a widow’s walk, a wrap-around porch, a beautiful circular arch before the front door—the list could go on.  
Pitch fantasized about living there, and as long as For Sale sign stayed up, there was little bitterness in these fantasies. Why, the sign even said that the owners wouldn’t split it up into apartments!  
  
When the For Sale sign disappeared, Pitch thought nothing of it. It probably just needed to be replaced again. He went to bed that August morning at peace.  
  
He was rudely awoken that August afternoon, a couple of hours before he normally got up, by the sound of a large truck driving down the small street. By the time he was awake enough to look out the window and glare at it—for it didn’t seem to be moving on—he was able to witness, with growing horror, a moving truck trundling through the gates to what he had been thinking of for far too long as _his_ house. He stared at it. He stared at it so long he almost missed the expensive red SUV that pulled up behind it to let out a very tall, broad man with long white hair and a long white beard. He made a gesture of utter delight, and immediately pulled out a phone to make a call.  
  
At this point, Pitch realized that he was probably being creepy, and that this wouldn’t be the right approach to take, here. He stepped back from his windows and let the curtains fall closed. He had never paid much attention to his neighbors before, but now—now he would. If only to make sure he could stop them from doing anything to ruin the house.  
  
Several weeks passed, and Pitch was coming to the conclusion that he was not very good at this “paying attention to one’s neighbors” thing, even if he had made a point of greeting everyone who walked out from the house and down the sidewalk. He had spent more time on his porch in the daytime than ever before. Even in the shade, he was growing uncomfortably tan! The beginning of fall had made his investigations less unpleasant, but the fact of the matter was that he had to continue them because he still had absolutely no idea who actually lived in that house, nor who owned it.  
  
The people he had seen leaving it included:  
  
Nicholas St. North, the man with the SUV, and the CEO of North Pole Toys. He could have bought the house, but Pitch found it impossible to take control of any conversations with him. They had had an interesting conversation about 90’s gross-out toys, though.  
  
Jack Frost, an absurdly-named figure skater that even Pitch remembered as winning a gold medal in the most recent winter Olympics. He was just twenty-one, but based on some casual mentions of sponsorship deals, Pitch guessed that he could have bought the house, too. He had drunkenly left a North Pole Toys Jack Frost action figure on Pitch’s railing the night of his birthday.  
  
Bunnymund, the actual artist Bunnymund, who was much more muscular than Pitch would have guessed, with a much stronger Australian accent, and knew everything there was to know about Faberge eggs. He could have just been designing the gardens for the house (the house deserved it, in Pitch’s opinion), but he seemed around too often for that.  
  
Ana Tuth, who had been a dentist before founding the Palace School. Pitch had looked it up and decided that maybe she could have bought the house, too, given the school’s reputation. But it was also very open about offering sliding scale fees, so who knew? She was lively and cheerful and she compared Pitch’s teeth to Jack’s unfavorably, though not unkindly. And, well, truthfully.  
  
Sandy Mann, who Pitch thought he remembered from an author’s convention years and years ago, though he couldn’t be sure. Sandy wrote and illustrated children’s books under the name Sanderson Mansnoozie, and they quietly confided to Pitch that they were getting really frustrated with their publisher’s refusal to let them change their first name. They could have bought the house, too, Pitch discovered after researching them later. He had stayed up very late thinking about them, actually, and had almost bought one of their original watercolors for an outrageous amount before deciding that he really needed to go to sleep.  
  
So. Jack and Nicholas could easily know each other, Nicholas and Sandy could easily know each other, Sandy could easily know Bunnymund and Ana and they all could know each other, but they were not related. So, they spent more time with each other than ordinary friends did, but—whatever, Pitch wasn’t an expert in friendship. All of his apparent neighbors were the closest people he had to friends right now, and they just chatted in the street so Pitch could eventually find out who to harass about caring for the house. Besides, he couldn’t join their world of soft landscapes and lush flowers and funny little toys. He would…probably…be totally unable to write in such an environment.  
  
So he decided to stop sitting on his porch and start being creepy from his window again.  
  
First, he learned that Ana and Nicholas were a couple who kissed each other before leaving for work. Then, he learned that either they or Sandy and Bunnymund had stayed over and that Sandy and Bunnymund were also a couple that kissed each other goodbye. Then he learned that Bunnymund was cheating on Sandy with Jack, and then he wasn’t sure what to do.  
  
He wasn’t sure what to do all day, until everyone who had left returned. And then he learned that he was probably wrong about a lot of things, because everyone kissed everyone else when they got back.  
  
So, they probably all owned the house in spirit, if not on paper. Did that simplify things? Well, it meant that he could talk to any of them about the preservation of Victorian homes and have it be a personal matter.  
  
But this aspect of their lives was something none of them had ever even hinted at in the conversations. Which meant that they wanted to keep it a secret from him and now it wasn’t. Thus, he was bona-fide creepy now, and not in the fun way, and all because he was obsessed with a house he definitely didn’t deserve an invitation to, now.  
  
Great.  
  
It felt worse than he expected. But maybe that was because of his changed sleep schedule. He resolved to switch it back at once. And he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t sit out on the porch anymore. It was bad for his work. He re-set his alarm and took the Jack Frost action figure off the kitchen table and put it into the junk drawer.  
  
After a week, he got a note in his mailbox. _Come to dinner, neighbor!_ it said. _If you’re still alive, that is!—Jack_  
  
Pitch put this in the junk drawer as well.  
  
The next day he received a much more formal invitation, in a heavy red envelope, that had actually been sent through the mail. Pitch tapped it against his hand. They _couldn’t_ actually like him. He had to decline. Could he do so without giving any explanation? Especially when the actual reason was that he was going to be the sixth wheel, and knew that he was going to be the sixth wheel when he shouldn’t know that. But why should such awkwardness feel so heavy, like sadness? It wasn’t as if they were actually friends. It wasn’t as if he _missed_ them, he hardly knew them. But the dinner was for the next day. He would have to call to decline. There was a phone number included. Probably St. North’s, but he was just guessing, and no matter who it was, he could get drawn into a conversation and that would only make it more awkward when he said no.  
  
But then again…  
  
Pitch touched the scar on his neck. He had survived much, much worse social situations than this. And this might be his only chance to ever get inside that house.  
  
That, he really couldn’t pass up. Especially since he would never live there now.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #yeah right Pitch you'll be living there soon enough#get ready to get polyamorous
> 
> mira-eyeteeth reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> Ehehee, this is just adorable. I really have a thing for being in the headspace of a character who keeps trying to talk them out of dumb feelings like Pitch does. #precious babies#Pitch just give up and have fun
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: oh my gosh, this was so cute.
> 
> kazechama said: Jvhcxhf! This is so many different levels of epic and amazing. I love your ot+ AUs so much.


End file.
